I did have a book "Anglo Saxon Reader" some years ago, but my light fingered brother borrowed it, so I cant remenber the author now.
I do recall though that it was closer to old Dutch than German.
Dutch, English & German are all teutonic languages, but German turned into Higher German about a century or so ago, becoming more complicated with case endings. English & Dutch evolved more slowly and are more similar, with less case endings to learn. Dutch also evolved in the last century to lose some case endings & simplify some words, hence Africaans is quite close to Old Dutch.
The Anglo-Saxon/Old English is therefore closer to Old Dutch.

The Gesithas would be the chaps to talk to if you actually want to learn to understand Old English as a language. Stephen Pollington (via Anglo Saxon books) has written a very user friendly beginners course:-

The one Matt has suggested appears to be by the same person as the link I gave above - in fact its the same book.
the website one above tho offers you a few sections that you can view for free, to see how you get on with it before you cough up the money for the book/course for prooper (and as a student, you are probably only on low income/pocket money arent you, which isnt going to stretch too far if you are buying kit as well). If you can handle the sections offered, then move on to bigger things later.

no ive got quite a big income actually around £120 per month. 2 jobs but i cant get on any of those websites at the moment as im using my mums work computer and it will filter everything. its a surprise it hasnt filtered the forum. thanks tho what is the book called?

dbob.culley wrote:no ive got quite a big income actually around £120 per month.

Book details are:-

First Steps in Old English
An easy to follow language course for the beginner
Stephen Pollington

If you want to teach yourself Anglo-Saxon / Old English this is the book.

A complete, well presented and easy to use Old English language course which contains all the exercises and texts needed to learn Old English. This course has been designed to be of help to a wide range of students, from those who are teaching themselves at home, to undergraduates who are learning Old English as part of their English degree course. The author is aware that some individuals have little aptitude for learning languages and that many have difficulty with grammar. To help overcome these problems he has adopted a step by step approach that enables students of differing abilities to advance at their own pace. The course includes practice exercises.

This revised and expanded edition was published October 2006

£16-95 ISBN 1-898281-38-6 245 x 170mm / 10 x 6½ inches 256 pages

Some of the texts used in this book are read by the author on
the two CDs Old English Poems, Prose and Lessons £11.75.

I am using Steve Pollingtons First steps and am at the end of Mark Athertons Teach Yourself Old English,both are very good.
I am also doing the Correspondence Course with Steve Pollington which really keeps me on my toes!
Sweets Anglo-Saxon Dictionary and the on-line Bosworth-Toller Dictionary are really useful.

Just on the subject of some knowledge of German being helpful in learning Old English (Old English is the language, Anglo-Saxon is the culture, by the way):

A German friend of mine was recently taking a degree course in Old High German (the "official" early medieval version of modern German). The class also looked at Frisian, modern Dutch and various other related languages. Then the tutor gave out a text in an unidentified language - they could understand almost all of it, but they had never seen that language before; it was Old English.

In some ways, spoken Old English is completely unlike modern German; the harsh gutturals and hard "s" that are frequent in German words are almost absent in OE - there are some gutturals, but softer and more like Danish.

I would recommend that before you get into learning vocabulary, you look at the (estimated) pronunciation of each sound in OE. I say estimated because nobody today knows the actual sound of certain combinations of letters (eo, ea and ie for example), plus there were various dialectic differences around England.

f in OE has two values, s has two, h has three, g has at least three, as does c. Learning how these are pronounced in different words and positions within words should be your first task, only then go on to the vocab and grammar.

When you get to the stage when you can see a word like "gafol" (tax, tribute, gift, etc.) and know that it is pronounced "guvol", then you are becoming proficient.